polearms vs skeleton = bad

That's what I thought.

 

The level of a magic skill isn’t as important as how much Attunement you have for that for that, which increases various things, like damage.

 

1198 listed for polearm and 113 for Earth. Guess I should bump up my attunement there a bit and the polearm score really isn't attunement. Still good for comparison.

 

I have all but one skill in the Air tree GM'd, and multiple pieces of jewelry with Air gems.

 

What is your total Air Attunement then with all that?

 

For some spells, like Shield of Air, attunement only affects duration. Skill level and dexterity are what affects focus transfer and only skill level affects SoA's attunement boost. I believe that dexterity also has a significant impact on damage for the air tree.

 

Somewhere between 100 and 150 depending on the buffs I had up. I don't have the game installed at the moment to check.

 

The zero at the bottom end of some skills' stated effects can be contextual. For example, sun/moon worship give zero buff when the sun/moon is unavailable, and non-zero buff when they are active.

Banish Undead should do zero damage against creatures which are not undead, it doesn't mean the range against undead enemies is from zero to X.

 

That's rather low Air Attunement. While having a magic skill at level 100 is neat and all, you need to boost your Air Attune to very high levels.

I'm starting to wonder if people aren't understanding HOW important attunement for each magic tree is and how it effects your spells within that tree.....

 

It's literally not possible to raise it higher without boosting skills passed GM at this point. I have all but SoA at GM or higher, attuned gems on necklace, ring, chest and weapon, I'm buffing with the air attunement spell, and I don't have any of the anti-attunement skills. I might be misremebering my attunement, if it helps, my dash was at +4.5 movement at skill level 107, that much I remember. But I do know that green skeleton mages were able to shrug off magic attacks and green skeleton footman could flatten me long before my spell could dent their HP pools.

 

I'd rather enemies had weaknesses more often that resistances. Make skeletons weak to bludgeon instead of annoying against everything else.

 

The plan was for a full overhaul, the skelly change was just step one, given that we are around a year and a half latter, I suspect the steps were larger than expected, but order 227 kicked in and we got stuck here.

 

Air magic works best for magic users. Mine gets to 400+ and only 40 of that is from raising the skills over 100. Air magic cuts them down like nothing at those levels.

If you spread your character out without specializing, it makes it hard to take down those difficult mobs. If you're ranged, you will do better skipping air attacks against stuff like that and use those attacks for your main weapon - bow.

 

It is a staple of Fantasy, not just SotA, but e.g. D&D too, that Skeletons/skeletal undead lacking skin and meat are less vulnerable to piercing and slashing attacks. Specializing in a too narrow way on just ONE weapon or way of attack (e.g. a guy fighting with a Rapier or using a Longbow) ougtht to have *some* more problems to vanquish them compared to other monsters.

 

Gems give like 20 - 40 each and the high end of those, as well as the mastery potions require either buying power or grinding your producer skills way passed your adventurer skills. Am I missing something fundamental that was never explained?

 

An air staff has +80 something attunement. You cant unlock the real damage from that tree without 300+ attunement. But fighting in the Shardfall with skill caps at 100 - 110 I still do good damage and attune is like 350. I use 3 Imbued air gems, and Imbued jewel necklace 2 epic air rings (these aren't needed -Imbued jewels give +12 each. You only gain +16 total with epic rings instead of Imbued ones). Its nothing fundamental, you just haven't maxed out the power of your potential gear.

For ranged you should take a look at the Imbued gems and jewels that apply specifically for range and then build your deck and gear around them. Use 3 of the same ones if possible. Don't mix and match.

 

Even without a staff or wands you can get over 300 attunement. I have all imbued gems/jewels and my attunement is 324 (I think, I'll have to check later). However, specialization is 120 and SoA is 160.

 

and as i've said, they should be vulnerable to bludgeoning as opposed to resistant to everything else

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Skeleton#content

 

I believe you are correct. What is an Avatar and how is that different from any other roleplaying class? Imagine an Avatar as every RPG class all rolled into one. Imagine a fire mage, that wears heavy armor and is excellent with the blades. The history of the Avatar in Ultima is that he is everything. There are some logical deterrents such as heavy armor giving you a major increase to your spell fizzle chances. But there are other skills that help you over come that. The game is designed with the belief that you will eventually level every skill to 100, at least. Elder Scrolls used to do something similar. You could level up any skill, even your magic skills as a warrior, but they gave you sever penalties to skills outside your class that made it incredibly hard, even if possible.

From a gameplay standpoint, how do you avoid players naturally falling in classic RPG archetypes? If I can get through the game with just mastering the Fire and light armor trees, then why would I bother to learn anything else? How do you nudge players into branching out and trying new skill combinations? You give enemies resistance and vulnerabilities to certain skills or skill trees. I always had a terrible time with Hardened Skeleton Fire Mages. Two of them would absolutely decimate me with fireballs and it seemed like I couldn't make a dent in them. So I trained my "Fire Resistance" skill, learned the Douse skill from the Water tree, and switched over to bludgeon weapons. I had to level them all up but eventually those skeleton fire mages gave me no issue.

You did not make the wrong choice in skills. In SOTA, you will level up every skill. SOTA is a never ending game, so what are you going to do with all that XP anyway? And this adds a layer of depth to the world. We as players have to figure out the resistances and vulnerabilities of enemies. Over time you will develop sets of gear that is best at taking out different enemies. And it changes combat from just being something you plow through and turns it into a strategy element.

 

In other RPGs, including the Ultima series, you also typically either have a party that lets you diversify your attacks, or the ability to engage with a Rock-paper-scissors system isn't locked behind hundreds of hours of grinding.